Marketers have done well by pairing technological advancements with the best AI tools—such as personalization based on browsing history. This trend should continue with the new era of global chatbots. When companies move toward marketing by chat, they need to use this channel wisely or risk damaging their customer relationships. As technology advances, user expectations rise.

March 2010 Issue

News Features

The set of crises facing publishing today is enough to make the most hardened of journalists curl up in the fetal position. But there is a subset of journalistic visionaries who are hoping that this time of tumult will allow for real innovation in media, resulting in fresh ideas and, perhaps paradoxically, a return to the basics of investigative reporting.

It isn't easy to make predictions about the future. But doing so about the ever-changing world of communications and technology can be especially difficult. Avaya, a business communications provider, decided to try and tackle this with its "Ten Communications Trends for 2010."

Featured Stories

An emerging branch of environmentalism, armed with startup attitude and the analytical framework of behavioral economics, is positing that given the right combination of information, social pressure, and incentives, behavior can be influenced in an environmentally beneficial way. One element of this strategy involves social media, which can exert positive social pressure.

From I'm-not-a-crook crooks to the financial thievery of the first decade of this century, the trust between the big institution and the people it purports to serve has eroded. Trust today is a big issue. Earning it—and keeping it—is the Holy Grail of achievement. If you win trust, you gain entry into someone's mind, values, passions, and even their checkbook.

Many forces are impacting innovations in content management, including an increasing need for agility, the growth of social media, and globalization. This vibrant industry is responding to meet the expectations of organizations and their customers today and in the future.

Today, the influence of our peers has taken on a new guise, through the infinitely expanded sphere of community online. While we are all socially motivated to one extent or another, today, the role of social life extends well beyond the lunchroom, and it is profoundly impacting every aspect of business.

A raft of recent reports and surveys reveal that more brands are running mobile campaigns, a positive trend that plays in favor of media publishers that have the inventory and know how to use (sell) it.

Once in a while, I get asked what I call a "Flat Earth" question: "Prove to me the earth isn't flat." Then, I stumble to find good answers. So it was in a recent taxonomy modeling session, when a line-of-business participant asked me: "Why do we need folders anyway?"

For everyone, the past year has been dominated by depressing statistics. I thought I was inured to these negative numbers until I read the section in the "Global Intranet Trends" report on finding information. Only 14% of respondents were very satisfied with their search application, and only 6% were very satisfied with the content that was returned from a search. Why are the results so poor?

At the end of 2009, Google announced that (finally) real-time results will be included in Google web search. This means that live updates from sites such as Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts, will appear within Google search results mere seconds after posting.

Case Studies

Ships at sea rely on satellite communication for internet access, as the obvious considerations of distance and mobility make any other kind of connectivity impossible. However, satellite communication is extremely expensive, relatively slow, and unreliable, having a marked effect on ship-to-ship communications. With the increasing use of computers in naval operations, a reliable, fast network between ships became an increasingly attractive option for the Navy.